Before the war began, Beirut was being transformed from a
charming city of red-roofed houses and small buildings surrounded by
gardens into a mass of concrete high-rise buildings. Everyone took it
for granted that eventually all the older buildings of Beirut would be
gone in the name of progress.

The war took care of many old buildings that the developers
had not gotten to yet, and many more were needlessly lost after the
war during an over-ambitious effort to transform downtown
Beirut. Ironically, these events resulted in an appreciation of what
was left. Many older downtown buildings that would have fallen to the
sledgehammer if the prewar trend had continued were saved.

Still, I assumed that, in the rest of Beirut beyond downtown, the older
buildings were doomed. Imagine my reaction when I went to Beirut last June and
stumbled into the area of Abdul-Wahhab el-Inglizi Street in Ashrafieh. There,
dozens of buildings have been meticulously restored. This includes many of the
traditional nineteenth-century Lebanese houses with red tile roofs, long
appreciated by fans of Lebanese architecture. However, many more-recent
buildings have been saved. These were built earlier this century after
concrete replaced stone as a building material. They usually feature several
floors, spacious balconies supported by pillars, windows on all four sides,
and charming Art Deco features such as angular or rounded arches and concrete
moldings. These buildings were, until recently unappreciated, something that
you moved out of when you could afford it. Their paint was long gone, and the
concrete was crumbling. Now, they, as symbols of a gracious lifestyle of the
past, have been rediscovered. At least one such building has been transformed
into a nice hotel. Countless fine restaurants have opened up in the area,
attracting many people who got fed up with the traffic between Beirut and
Jounieh's culinary attractions.

After the initial discovery, I made a point of going on a
walking tour of the area, admiring the variety of buildings ranging
from elaborate mansions from the last century to more humble buildings
from the 1940s with simple lines and rounded balconies similar to the
one where I spent my first three years before it was demolished. I
took pictures left, right, and above.

Other old buildings have been renovated elsewhere in
Beirut, including a humble two-story concrete house on Mar Elias
Street in Mseitbeh that has been covered with stone and fitted with
beautiful outdoor lights. Scattered among the boring apartment
buildings everywhere in the city are gems of Art Deco architecture
like I have not seen anywhere else.

The government has been enforcing a law that requires
owners to repaint their buildings every few years. In many cases, the
bare minimum has been done, where paint is applied over cracks, holes,
and splintering wood. The examples mentioned above, however, were
restored with permanence in mind.

The government has also passed a law classifying hundreds
of buildings as historical. This includes one street, Rue Gouraud, in
the Rmeil district near the port, where dozens of old houses survive,
forming an intact neighborhood.

What I saw in Beirut exceeded my wildest dreams. Perhaps
Beirut can save some of what made it special. Go to any European city,
and you will see that the center has changed little from what it was
like a century or more ago: Paris, Rome, London (what was not
destroyed by aerial bombing), Marseille, Zurich, Dubrovnik,
Istanbul... In Miami, there is a whole district of restored Art Deco
buildings that is world famous. Tourists flock by the million to these
cities, not just to see museums, but also to experience the ambiance
of the cities as a whole. No one wants to go and look at a bunch of
new apartment buildings. Beirut can still preserve the charming
Mediterranean setting, not just for the sake of tourists on walking
tours of old neighborhoods, but as an inspiration for the Lebanese
themselves.